Chapter 10: My first encounter with a god and it's not so pleasant

Gods, I am so sick from freaking monsters. I swear, if I have to run away from another monster, I am gonna slap myself in the face.

As we continued running through the forest, finally able to escape, we maneuvered through a couple trees and bushes, finding ourselves at an abandoned road with a gas station about a mile away.

Unfortunately for us, the vultures ended up following us through the exit and began pecking at us, tearing up our already dirty shirts and pants. Kai slashed at them with his sword and blasted flames at them, but they were too quick and dodged his attacks. Amethyst was screaming and trying to smack them with her bow, but to no avail. Alexander was able to kill one with his shields, Slammer and Jammer, but there were still far too many.

I, meanwhile, was struggling. My knife slashes barely did anything as they just flew past them and all of my Mist clouds missed, (Pun not-intended). The most success I had was slowing them down with a temporary time-slow spell I learnt from Millicent.

Unfortunately though, it only lasted one second, and I once again, missed my following strikes. My gut began hurting once again, throbbing so hard, I almost passed out. Just a normal day in the office.

Kai rolled next to me with a smirk. "Hey, I got a terrible idea."

"What?" I asked.

"Try and draw the birds into me, so I can become a flaming explosion and blow them up," he explained.

I looked at him with confusion. "And how exactly do you suppose I do that?"

"Tell Amethyst and Alexander to lay off the birds. I got this," he instructed before rolling away.

"Okay," I muttered. I got up and yelled to Amethyst and Alexander, "Hey, stop attacking the birds, Kai's got a plan!"

They both looked at me like I had two heads but did it anyway. I looked at Kai, who nodded.

"Hey, chicken freaks! Ares sucks! He couldn't beat Hephaestus even if he had no arms or legs!" Kai shouted. The vultures turned towards him, about to strike.

"You wouldn���t dare attack me! Creatures of Ares are weak and slow!" Kai insulted again. That seemed to be the final straw, as they all flew at him, talons out and ready to attack.

Suddenly, he burst into flames, slaying every vulture in a fit of fire. The vultures crumbled to dust, as if they were never there to begin with.

Kai grinned at me, wiping some dust off his jacket.

"Thanks for the assist, Rose!" he said, giving Alexander a bear-hug.

"Now what gives you the right to talk about me that way?" a voice shouted behind us.

We all turned around. In front of us was a muscular man, wearing a black leather jacket and black jeans. He looked like a typical biker dude, and wore dark sunglasses, fingerless gloves, and a brown leather belt with a knife sheathed inside.

Even though the man appeared to be a regular mortal, we all knew who he was.

"Ares," Amethyst said with surprise. Kai and Alexander seemed to be just as shocked.

"Father?" Alexander asked with wide eyes.

Ares looked at Alexander. I didn't realize this before, but Ares's eyes were purple. "You are no son of mine."

"Hey, don't talk to my friend that way!" Kai yelled, standing across from Ares. "And why are your eyes purple? You forget to take your meds?"

"You dare insult me? I will destroy you pathetic mortals right here, right now," Ares shouted, pulling out a large sword.

Kai drew out his sword as Alexander took out his shields, ready to battle. I unsheathed my knives and Amethyst brought out her bow, but I had a feeling that our weapons wouldn't do much.

Ares took on all four of us, parrying our strikes with immense speed and slashing Amethyst's bow in half. Ares then kicked me back about ten feet, leaving Alexander and Kai to face him themselves.

They rolled backward as Ares struck at them in a forward motion. Kai then sent a blast of fire at Ares, who merely sidestepped the attack. Alexander ripped a piece of the pavement out of the road and threw it at Ares, but the god of war punched it to bits.

Meanwhile, my back and chest ached with so much pain, I could barely move.

Eventually, I willed myself to get up after many failed attempts. As I got up, my back shrieked at me with defiance, telling me to lay down. But I knew I couldn't just rest, my friends needed me. I noticed that Amethyst had brought out another bow from her bag and was leveling shots at Ares. Meanwhile, Kai and Alexander were sword-fighting Ares, Alexander having morphed his shields into a large, Stygian iron sword, a powerful type of enchanted metal that Amethyst had taught me about.

I scooted my way over to where Amethyst was, my back and chest still throbbing. "What are we supposed to do? Kai and Alexander can't hold him off forever."

Amethyst frowned and then suddenly smiled, her eyes lighting up. "I got an idea. There's a spell that I was taught from one of my Apollo cabin members a few years ago. I'll enchant it onto one of my arrows so I can slow down Ares. Once I do this, I'll need you to shoot a large Mist cloud at him, so he can become temporarily slow and blinded while we run away."

I nodded as Amethyst motioned for me to follow her to a large tree near the road.

"I'll give you a signal when to shoot the Mist cloud," she instructed.

As I hid behind the tree, waiting for the signal, I looked back to the fight. So far, it wasn't looking too good. Alexander had been knocked to the side, and Kai was locked into a one-on-one sword battle with Ares, his lit-up Celestial bronze sword clashing with Ares's large steel sword.

Kai's sword suddenly fell out of his hands and he was left unarmed. Amethyst whispered something under her breath and her celestial bronze arrow became black. She shot it at Ares's head with perfect accuracy, stabbing it right through his forehead. She then looked at me and mouthed, "GO!"

I jumped out of the trees as fast as I could, and began conjuring up the spell, my mind clouded with thoughts. The entire quest, Kai and Alexander had been doing all the heavy work while Amethyst had led us with great leadership and bravery. While my teammates had done their best to lead our quest to success, I had done nothing at all. I did nothing against the serpent, boars, or even the vultures, and now I had to defeat a god? I couldn't even save my sister, let alone my friends.

But I knew that doubting myself wasn't going to fix anything. I had to do this. For Marianne, for my friends, and for the sake of the quest. I cleared my mind of all my negative thoughts and shot a large cloud of Mist at Ares.

Ares instantly missed his finishing sword slash, becoming blinded by my mist cloud. He slashed it to the right of Kai and fell down, thanks to Amethyst's spell. Kai quickly got up and retrieved his Celestial-bronze sword, Scorcher, as Alexander picked himself up off the ground.

"So what do we do now?" I asked.

"Kill him?" Kai suggested hopefully. Alexander looked a little bit hurt. I never really considered how Alexander might feel that we were fighting his father, but after what Ares said to Alexander, he deserved it.

"We can't kill a god, Kai. Let's just run past him before my spell wears off," Amethyst answered.

We skirted around Ares and headed forward, running as quickly as we could towards New York. But before we fully made our way to New York, we took a small stop at the gas station, where Amethyst gave us some hats and clothes to blend into the New York folk.

I wore a regular pair of light jeans, a plain white shirt, and a dark green jacket along with white sneakers. Kai and Alexander came out also wearing jeans, along with buttoned shirts and tennis shoes. Amethyst looked very similar to me, wearing jeans and white sneakers, except she was wearing a blue shirt with the words, "Coffee equals Happiness", and a gray jacket.

"Yay, we look like Yankees!" Alexander cheered. "Maybe we'll get to go to the Spurs stadium!"

Kai faceplamed. "Sure, buddy. Let's go with that. Anyways, we should probably head to New York and get a bite, so we can head to LionsWorth Enterprises."

Amethyst scowled at him. "We're not going to get McDonalds for the last time! The spells will eventually wear off and we don't have much time before those goons come and get Arthur and Geneva."

"Fine, no McDonalds," Kai said with disappointment.

"All right," I said. "Let's go before Ares comes and kills us."

We left the gas station and continued down the road.

Finally, after walking down the road and going through a couple parks and rural areas, we made it into New York City, admiring the large buildings, sites, and how packed it was. Lucky for us, LionsWorth Enterprises was one of the bigger buildings in New York, so it wasn't too hard to find.

The building was extremely tall, almost comparable to a skyscraper. It had a very futuristic look, with two, large rectangular buildings made of transparent glass windows flanking a shorter building in the middle with the name, "LionsWorth Enterprises" written in golden letters. In front of the entrance to the building, there was a large red carpet with golden lining and trees flanking the sides of the carpet.

"There it is! I need to get Cynthia LionsWorth's autograph!" Alexander squealed. Kai looked at him with a blank face.

"Okay, but how are we going to get in the building? They only allow special guests in," Amethyst asked.

"Well, we do it the old-fashioned way. We pretend to be business people and act like we're actually supposed to be there," Kai said, acting as if the plan were the most simplest thing ever.

Amethyst smoothed her hair over. "And how do you plan to exactly do that?"

"We walk in as if we have a meeting. Then we find Arthur and Geneva," Kai explained.

"That doesn't really answer my question, but whatever," Amethyst muttered.

"We don't look like we're part of a business, though. We look like we're teenagers about to put bets on horse fighting," I said. In retrospect, I might have exaggerated what we looked like.

Kai gave me a blank look. "I really don't know why you think we look like that. It's not about clothes anyways. We just have to act like we're a business pitching a new idea."

"I still don't like this idea," Amethyst complained.

"Do you have any better ideas, Emerald?" Kai asked. After waiting for Amethyst to say something, he said, "That's what I thought. Now, let's go!"

We walked towards LionsWorth Enterprises, checking around us for monsters. As we walked towards the glass door entrance on the red carpet, I couldn't help but gasp in awe as I saw the large fountains flanking the glass doors of the entrance.

But if I thought that the fountains were impressive, then the inside of the buildings was definitely a sight worthy of being showcased in Olympus.

The inside of the middle building was extremely wide and lengthy, with a grand sitting area to the left of the room, and several sets of white sofas with pristine coffee tables. There were also state-of-the -art television screens surrounding the room and advertising the business. In the middle of the room was a large golden fountain with a statue in the middle representing some goddess. To the far right of the room was a bar and small restaurant with a couple of wooden dining tables to eat at. The room led into a large marble hallway with three elevators on each side of the hallway. Finally, to the right of us, was the receptionist area with several very professional-like people making calls and checking in people at a large, black marble table.

We walked over to the reception table, where the middle receptionist looked up at us.

"Hello, how may I help you?" The receptionist asked with a friendly smile. She had short blonde hair and emerald green eyes and was wearing a knee-length black dress with a badge pinned on her chest that said, "Maggie".

Kai combed his hair over, trying to make himself look more professional. "Hello, we are here representing...Kai Dentistry and have a private meeting with Arthur LionsWorth."

"Kai Demi-Tech," Amethyst corrected. Kai looked at her with an impressed face, like he was saying 'nice save'.

"Let me check the schedule," the receptionist said, typing on her computer. "I'm afraid we don't have a Kai Demi-tech on the schedule. Did you book a private meeting with Mr. LionsWorth?"

"Um... yes!" Kai responded, sweat trickling down his face.

"And we were promised a delicious sushi meal," Alexander added.

The receptionist stared at us, now clearly suspicious. "I'm sorry, but are you guys really a real business?"

Kai suddenly fell silent, as did Amethyst. Alexander seemed to be staring off in a different direction, leaving everything to me.

"Yes. We're a new business that specializes in creating tech for demigods, so that's most likely why you don't know us. We heard that LionsWorth Enterprises was patenting a new phone, and we were hoping that we could help manufacture the device," I explained.

Amethyst and Kai looked at me with gaping mouths and Alexander...was still staring off in the distance. However, as incredible as it may have sounded, there was still a chance the receptionist had no idea what demigods were and might not believe us.

The receptionist blew a sigh of relief. "That's good. Usually people come here and make up random businesses just to talk to Mr. LionsWorth. Arthur has no meetings for the next hour, so I can schedule a meeting for you. I will call you when he is ready to meet you. Have a good day!"

"And about the sushi dinner?" Alexander asked hopefully.

"Sure, we can arrange a sushi dinner," the receptionist replied.

We thanked the receptionist and walked over to the waiting area, sitting on the white leather sofas anxiously.

"Well done, smooth guy," Amethyst said, glaring at Kai. "Thanks to your awkward jittering, we almost lost the meeting. You're just lucky Rose saved you."

"In fairness, I had no idea what I was talking about," Kai reasoned. "Look, the important thing is, we got the meeting."

"And a free sushi dinner!" Alexander added. Kai nodded and gave Alexander a high-five. After waiting for a couple minutes, the receptionist came up to us.

"Mr. LionsWorth is ready for you on the seventh floor. Good luck!" she announced.